


heard from someone you're still pretty

by la_victorienne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, always-a-girl!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: Eames is sleeping, but her voice can wake him every time.





	

"Eames,” she whispers, and it wakes him in the dark. “Eames,” she whispers again, quiet, broken--she's in the chair in his hotel room, legs crossed at the knee, the slit in her skirt hiked high enough for him to see the lace trim of her stockings, the hint of a garter. His mouth goes dry, and he sits up.

“Yes? Yes, what is it, darling?”

“You’re not going to ask how I got in your hotel room?”

Eames chuckles, a sleepy half-laugh. Her voice is low, dark--he sees it in his mind, wine-red and velvet-soft. She’s been drinking, he can tell, and he blinks the sleep out of his eyes. “Arthur, you and I both know I leave you a key at every desk. Whether you’ve used it to get in or not is of no concern to me.”

She purses her mouth--he’s kissed those red lips, kissed the stain right off of them, when they’d just gotten out and were celebrating the people they would become, and the memory nearly stops him in his tracks--and huffs a sigh. “I used the key,” she says sullenly. Yes, definitely drinking. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, and looks away toward the window, and he wonders for a moment how long she’s been sitting there, watching him sleep.

“What are you doing here, Arthur?”

She’s up and out of the chair before he can blink, kicking off her shoes and throwing her knee over his hips with a fluidity as much Arthur as it is whatever she’s had. She exhales into his mouth--yes, red wine, and good wine, too--and her lips quirk up in a frighteningly empty smile. “Why wouldn’t I be here?” A kiss, quick, soft on his mouth. “I want you, you want me--why not?” Another kiss, longer, deeper, and she pulls back, fingers on the hem of his shirt.

“Correction,” he replies, stilling her hands, leaning back. “You want me as long as I don’t love you--and I do, still, love you. In case we’re counting, which we usually are.”

Again, the mouth purse--he lifts a hand, brushes a stray lock of hair away from her face. “You’re a fool,” she spits out, knocking his hand away.

“Yes,” Eames agrees. “And a liar, and a thief, and often a stray. But in love with you, all the same.” He shrugs. “Sorry, darling. You’re welcome to stay here, if you still want, but I don’t think it’ll end the way you seem to think it’s going.”

She rolls off of him, whumping into the pillows, groaning. “I hate you,” she mumbles.

“No, you don’t,” Eames replies, stroking a hand down her side, bending to kiss her hipbone through her skirt.

“I do,” she protests, but it sounds like a croon, her manicured hand brushing through the short bristles of his hair. “I hate you all the time, hate your fucking smile and your shoulders and your hands and how easy this is for you, how you could just--just let me walk away with him, let me set myself up for this, and never bat a fucking eye.”

Oh, Eames thinks. That’s what this is about. She’s always been half in love with Cobb, for as long as he’s known her, in love with his genius and ambition. With Mal gone, she must’ve thought--Eames sighs and lays back, turning so he can see her face. “So he said no, did he?” he asks, voice carefully neutral. “Sorry, love.”

“Bite me,” she snaps back, turning her head away. He presses in, mouths her shoulder, a hint of teeth. “Bastard,” she sighs--but there, she’s scooting closer, letting him draw her into his arms, into the cocoon she’s avoided for years. “God, I hate you,” she finishes, in a moan, almost breathless.

“No, you don’t,” he repeats into her skin, reacquainting himself with the memories he’s held onto for so long. The smell of her hair, the pitch of her breath. He loves her even more completely every day, if that’s possible.

“No,” she agrees, cotton-mouthed and sleepy. “I really, really don’t. Go to sleep, Mr Eames,” she mumbles, as she drifts off.

In the morning he’ll wake her with coffee, water, and aspirin, will let her curl into his thigh as she sleeps off her hangover, will let her pretend none of this every happened, because he loves her. He will brush the hair out of her face, iron her blouse while she showers, kiss her cheek when she leaves. He will tell her again--I love you--and she will roll her eyes as she says "see you at the warehouse, Eames." He will consider killing Cobb.

He will do all of those things, tomorrow. For now, he has her, curled into his body like she used to, whuffling into the curve of his arm, warm and quiet and vulnerable. For now, he can return to the past, the time when it was perfect, before he buggered everything, got too close, sent her running. For now he can pretend. For now, she is his. 


End file.
